Our next First Creek Greenway cleanup will be Saturday, September 10 from 9 am to noon. We’ll meet at the parking lot at the end of Cottage Place, which is right next to the First Creek Greenway. Cottage Place is off 6th Ave between Glenwood Ave and Grainger Ave. ONK will provide gloves and garbage bags, as well as water and snacks. Even if you can’t come for all three hours we have scheduled, please come by for as long as you can and help out.

This is a really terrific event to do with your kids. They get some time outdoors where they can run around a bit and expend some excess energy while doing something good for the neighborhood and community. Older participants and adults can borrow a pair of waders and venture directly in the creek to get trash that can’t be reached from the shore.

If you are trying to decide whether or not you should come (short answer: you should), then think of this as more of a “treasure hunt” and less of a cleanup. Will you find a couch? A television? A shopping cart? A few old tires? Maybe a mattress? All of these things and more have been discovered during previous greenway cleanups. Come on out and see if you can top our past finds with something truly unique and unexpected.

We schedule greenway cleanup days twice each year, once in the spring and once in the fall, and we alternate which portions of the greenway we focus our efforts on, so there’s always plenty of work to be done.